The Acceptance (The GEOs Book 1)

by Ramona Finn

  My mind swam. Additional testing? What kind of testing?

  Immediately, I felt the blood rushing from my face. What if they compared a new testing of genetic results to their saved computers’ profiles? That had to be it, I realized—and they were sure to figure out who the hacker was when they did. How could I have been so stupid? There was no way I would make it through the verification process.

  “So get some rest,” Ben’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. He motioned to our rooms, and the doors opened as if of their own accord. Even if I hadn’t been a fraud, the image would have sent shivers up my spine. It looked less like we were revered guests and more like we were prisoners to be accounted for.

  “I’ll see you all in the morning,” he said as he exited the dorm hallway without looking back.

  The others huddled together, and I fell in naturally with the group—chittering about Ben and the Acceptance and who they thought the traitor might be. Sneaking off now would only make me look more suspicious.

  “Bet it’s one of the farmers,” Jason said, nudging Jax. “No way could someone from the Farming Union survive the Above.”

  “Actually, some of the best performing contestants have been farmers,” Kev retorted. “If you’d happened to pay attention in history, you’d know that.”

  “Doesn’t matter anyway,” Jade piped in with what was becoming her token response. “We’re all going to die anyway. You know we are. What does it matter which of us is supposed to be here?”

  No one responded, but I felt a shift in the group as they reacted to her statement. Maybe I could use that to get away from them and find some time for myself.

  “Well, I’m turning in.” I announced. “Whatever’s in store for us here, I don’t plan on dying sleep-deprived.”

  My words got a chuckle from the EFs, and one of them clapped a hand on my shoulder. “That’s the spirit! Live for the now. Worry about tomorrow later.”

  I forced a smile, hoping I’d come off as confident rather than desperate. It seemed to work well enough, for the others also filed into their rooms.

  I pushed the poster-covered door fully open. It was solid, much to my surprise, and it took a bit of weight to get it to move. Once closed, it clicked shut behind me, and I noticed the door had a bolted locking mechanism. I turned it, then pulled on the door just to be certain it would stay shut if someone tried to come in. It held.

  I sighed with relief and took off my coat and gloves. I’d been roasting since getting onto the shuttle, and for the first time in I didn’t know how long, sweat plastered my hair to my face. I stripped down to my base layers, tossing the excess into the corner. Then I surveyed my new living situation. The corner nearest to the door had a terminal and gaming chair—something only the top coders had access to. I had to hand it to Farrow Corp. They offered excellent accommodations.

  Next to the terminal was a single bed which was made up neatly, and across from that there was a small red couch. Unlike the other rooms I’d seen, it was obvious that this one was meant for a single person.

  On the wall across from the door was another door. It was hollow and swung open easily when I turned the handle, offering little in the way of privacy. It opened to reveal a sink, waste receptacle, and a large ceramic tub/shower combo.

  “A girl could get used to this,” I said to the empty room. Back home, we’d had a bathhouse split between a whole wing in the Geos. Ventilation just wasn’t good enough for every home to have their own. I’d often gone a week before my name would be selected again by the AI’s scheduling system—which was supposedly fine-tuned to our specific hygiene schedule based on a combination of genetic and vocational considerations. A shower was just what the doctor ordered now, though.

  After I’d bathed, I settled into the sleep clothes that had been provided in a cabinet next to the shower/tub combo. I stepped out of the bathroom, drying my hair with a towel. My eyes roamed the room casually, taking in my surroundings before finally settling on the terminal in the corner.

  I wondered if the others had been allocated terminals, as well. I hadn’t thought to check as we’d walked through the corridors. Non-coding terminals were mainly used for gameplay, but I was curious whether this one was hooked up to the main system or not.

  I sat down at the terminal and booted it up, muting Amara’s voice commands before the welcome screen could even come on.

  I logged in and accessed my file. The temptation to undo my hack was almost too much to handle, but there was too much at stake to take that risk. Security in this wing of the Geos was probably higher than anywhere else I’d been. I had no doubt that, despite the laid-back welcome we’d received, we were being watched, and since my profession made me a prime suspect, there was no way I was going to leave a trail to the program I’d created when I’d hacked the system.

  Red flags went up in my mind when I discovered my file was right there on the home screen, waiting for me to open it. My heart sank upon seeing the results. In the time since I’d been chosen, my survival rate had dropped to 35 percent. I was as good as dead. Now I knew how Jade felt.

  No longer curious about what entertainment the terminal might offer, I logged off and crawled into bed, too worried to savor the feel of the silken sheets against my skin. I stared at the ceiling vent and listened to the whir of the fan that circulated filtered air into my room, and took a deep breath. The air here was warm, but dry, so there had to be a dehumidifier in the system somewhere. It seemed like a waste to have it running in an area of the Geos that only housed a handful of people every hundred days, while hundreds were suffering back home. There was no way to experience these accommodations and not think what it might be like to get to the Labs, the Greens—to not only get to the surface and survive the Acceptance, but then be flown into the sky, to the Labs, the very opposite of the underground life we’d come to know in the Geos.

  Farrow Corp had done a good job of giving us just enough exposure to what life in the Greens might be like so that we were motivated in our training.

  Well, it worked, I thought to myself as I drifted off to the sound of the fan’s motor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I awoke to an alarm not unlike the one that had marked the beginning of my days back home. I hopped out of bed and dressed quickly, choosing to leave my heaviest layers behind so that I wouldn’t overheat. I kept my gloves just in case.

  The others filed out of their rooms about the same time as I did. Down the hall, an EF I’d never seen before was waiting. “Prepare for processing,” he commanded us. Instinctively, we formed a line behind him and he led us out into the octagonal room we’d passed through the night before. He paused and counted us there, taking note of our Union affiliations and marking things off on the clipboard he carried.

  “Doctors to the left. Farmers to the right. EFs in the room to the middle.” Then, he looked up at me and frowned. “You, come with me.”

  I shot a nervous glance at Kev. He smiled back at me, completely clueless. “See you later?” he mouthed. I nodded and followed the EF through another wall that raised as we approached it.

  “Haven’t had a coder in here for a while,” the EF said. “Not since I first started here, even.”

  “Oh?” I thought about the other Union trainees’ rooms. “The others had two beds,” I remarked. “Mine only had one. Why?”

  “Coders are usually exempt from selection,” he said, as if it were something everyone knew. “They’re given easy jobs for a reason. Most aren’t fit for survival in the Above.”

  So, our survival scores decided more than just our chances in the lottery. They decided our entire futures.

  I couldn’t decide if that was a blessing or a curse. On the one hand, Farrow Corp had placed all coders into a group that fit their physical abilities and chances of survival in some other arena. On the other, they’d lied to everyone in the Geos about coders’ chances at bettering their lives.

  Probably a kindness, even if it was a lie. A well-intentioned
lie, I decided, was better than a truth that quelled all hopes.

  I only hoped that if I was found out, R.L. Farrow would feel the same about my own lie.

  We came to a stop in front of another door.

  “Well, here we are,” the EF said. “Processing is usually short, but with the hack, I’d expect to be waiting a while.” He held the door open for me as I entered by myself. When it closed behind me, I heard it latch shut.

  The room was similar to Medical’s exam rooms. There was an exam table right in front of me, where I sat and waited for my turn. I didn’t see any cameras, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. I looked around as I waited. The walls were bare. No sign of a terminal anywhere.

  After what felt like an eternity, there was a knock at the door, followed by the lock clicking open. A woman walked in, clad in white robes. She carried a tablet with her, and I tried not to gasp audibly. A portable terminal. I’d heard rumors of such a thing when I’d been younger. Even the Above had once had this technology, but it had been rare and very valuable. We didn’t have one down in the Geos. Not as far as I knew, anyway.

  “State your name,” the woman said by way of introduction. She didn’t even raise her eyes from the screen.

  “Tylia Coder,” I said.

  She reached into her pocket for a long tube. “Hands,” she said. I complied, and she pressed the tube against one of my fingers. A sharp pain made me jump, and I looked down to see a crimson droplet gathering on the pad of my finger.

  The processor squeezed my finger over the tube, collecting three drops before handing me a piece of gauze. “Apply pressure.”

  I complied again.

  She pressed a button on the terminal and a small door on the wall opened. She placed the tube in the hole and shut the door. Then, she waited. After a moment, her terminal made a beep and she flipped through the info that popped up.

  “Identity confirmed. Tylia Coder. Survival chances 35 percent.” At that, she finally looked up at me, and I wished she hadn’t. Her eyes gave her away. She knew I didn’t belong there.

  “How could it be so low?” I hoped the genuine panic in my voice made my inquiry believable. “Why would the algorithm choose me if it was that low? That has to be a mistake.”

  Her eyes narrowed on me suspiciously, and I realized she must be thinking of the hack even as her brow furrowed and she flipped through the screen. “That’s a good question.”

  “Unless,” I tried my best to plant a seed of doubt in the processor’s mind, “whoever hacked the Acceptance must have changed my score. Could they have…” I let my voice trail off, hoping I sounded panicked when I announced, “could they have put me here to die? I didn’t know I had any enemies, but maybe I do! Why would they do that to me?”

  The increasing urgency of my tone had obviously made the processor uncomfortable. She shut down the file on her terminal, holding it close to her body. “I have everything I need here,” she said. “You’re free to proceed to training.”

  “What does that mean? Is that really my score? I don’t want to go through with this if I’m just going to die!” I’d turned the dramatics up to max, and I knew it. It did the trick, too.

  She frowned, backing toward the door. “Obviously, there will be an investigation, but that is above my paygrade. Proceed to training. Now.” She pressed a button, and the doors slid open to reveal the EF who had escorted me to processing.

  “Take her to training,” the processor said.

  “But I thought—” the EF began to argue, but the processor held up a hand to silence him.

  “Do as you are told.” She raised an eyebrow then, and the blood drained from the EF’s face.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and took me by the arm.

  Though his grip was gentle, it was clear I wasn’t going to be given a choice.

  Training for the Acceptance was all about how to survive the Above. Or that’s what the Elites who’d led our classes had told us.

  Most of my day consisted of the seven of us sitting in a room with four tables and seven chairs. Jax, Jason, Sorel, and Jade sat in the front at their assigned Unions’ tables. My table was in the back next to the farmers’ table. I sat alone, but Kev made sure to position himself closest to my table, and he gave me a friendly wave every day when I entered the room, which at least made me feel a little less alone.

  During these classes, we were taught about the Virus. How it had begun as an animal virus, but quickly gotten out of control—spreading across species from pigs to monkeys and then, finally, to humans.

  There was something to be said about knowing your enemy, but I found myself disappointed in the information the Elite instructors provided. It was nothing like the practical advice Wallace had given me—how to detect the Virus in yourself and others, and how to avoid areas that were known to be affected. General geography, and how to live off the land, were also skipped over during our training. Maybe I had a chance of surviving this after all, I found myself thinking, if Wallace’s unique advice was any sign of its usefulness.

  After lessons, we would break for lunch before simulations. Simulations were done in a dedicated gaming room and used a combination of augmented reality and image projection to create survival simulations. We trained simultaneously. Teams were able to interact with one another within their part of the room, but otherwise mingling within the simulation was discouraged. They said it had something to do with ensuring the data collected was controlled, but the longer I tried and failed on my own, the more I felt like their need for control had less to do with data and more to do with me, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.

  The game started at a beginner’s level, with individual settings based on the algorithm that had chosen each of us. The first day, our simulation covered what to do on day one of the challenge, which prioritized shelter and water. The computer projected the scene of a barren, cracked wasteland full of unmarked concrete ruins.

  Wallace had taught me that contaminated areas had been marked with a red X. None of these buildings were marked, so I chose the one that seemed most stable and began to search for signs of a functioning water supply.

  An alarm rang out. The simulation disappeared, replaced by flashing red lights.

  The AI’s voice came over the speakers: “Contestant terminated. Reset.”

  If you passed a level, you’d move on to more advanced levels, including those involving hand to hand and weapons combat modes. Some of us moved up the levels faster than others, but no matter what I did, I always seemed to fall behind the rest.

  The game’s great equalizer, though, was the Virus. It could hit at any time in the game, and seemed to be based on our survival scores, as well. Since my score was low, I had the highest instance of failure.

  Three days into training, I still hadn’t moved past Level 2. On day four, I lost my cool.

  “THIS STUPID COMPUTER IS BROKEN!” I yelled, pulling off my helmet and tossing it across the padded floor.

  “You just have to keep trying.” Kev removed his helmet, as well, turning to face me. Technically, this week was just meant to give us time to get used to the gaming interface. Real trials—the ones that would be graded—wouldn’t start until the following week. Kev was the best at them so far, even better than the EF trainees. None of us could figure out why. I was the absolute worst of the group.

  “You were so close this time—I could feel it!” Kev took his role as coach seriously. After I’d cried from my frustration on day two, he’d offered to help me work out the kinks. We’d even been able to sneak in for an extra session, just the two of us, while the others had been in the dining hall.

  “It’s impossible,” I said now. “The damn Virus keeps coming out of nowhere. I’m doomed.”

  “It’s not like you can get kicked out for failing a sim.” Kev was trying to reassure me, but he’d missed the point entirely. I was going to die in the Above.

  Or maybe that’s what they wanted me to think. “It’s rigged!” I said,
moving to the main terminal. They wanted me to quit—I suddenly felt sure of it.

  I flipped through the game code and checked the settings for my avatar. Since my survival rating had mysteriously tanked since my arrival, the computer automatically assumed I would die in the Above. I knew it would be too suspicious to change my survival chances again—instead, I inserted a glitch into the code connecting my survival chances to the game’s settings. Now, I’d have a chance at getting somewhere. To be on the safe side, I made sure that my settings matched all of the other trainees’, as well—if we all had the same chance and were being affected by the same glitch, nobody would think to trace it to me. I hoped.

  “Everything okay?” Kev asked. My heart jumped into my throat and I shut the terminal’s screen down again.

  “Yeah, the terminal was glitching. It should be fixed now.”

  Kev nodded. Things glitched in the Geos all the time, so it was a feasible cover. And I was pretty sure that, being a farmer, Kev wasn’t going to mull it over for long enough to realize that the technology in the training wing was a lot better maintained than anything we’d ever seen at home.

  “Come on,” I said, picking up my VR helmet and putting it back on my head. “Let’s try this one more time.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  I blew through the simulations after that, finishing Level 3 in orientation mode before the dining hall was anywhere close to closing—we had plenty of time before dinner, which was rare.

  “You wanna go grab something to eat together?” Kev asked hopefully. The others had made it clear that they weren’t interested in mingling with any of the other Union members, but he’d asked after every session, even though I’d always declined. Tonight, I felt like celebrating, though.